Ryan Gosling Is Kade Auberon in Star Wars: Starfighter

When Lucasfilm announced the film in 2025, it placed the story about five years after The Rise of Skywalker. That makes Kade a new lead living beyond the end of the sequel trilogy, not a younger version of someone audiences already know.

Levy has called it a standalone adventure in a period Star Wars has not explored on screen. He is directing from a script by Jonathan Tropper, his collaborator on The Adam Project. Levy and Kathleen Kennedy are producing, with Gosling among the executive producers.

The timeline gives the film room to acknowledge the galaxy left behind by Rey, Finn, and Poe without requiring their return. It also lets Lucasfilm build new factions, ships, and loyalties after the First Order. None of those connections has been announced. Kade’s story begins after the familiar saga, but Lucasfilm is presenting him as a lead who stands on his own.

The Car-Movie Influence Could Define the Action

Levy said American car culture, The Outsiders, and George Lucas’s American Graffiti influenced the film. That combination points toward speed, youth, found family, and a hero whose vehicle says something about him before he speaks. It also explains why the “fastest starfighter” line feels more specific than ordinary marketing. The ship may be the movie’s equivalent of a legendary car: freedom, danger, and identity in one machine.

Star Wars has always borrowed from other genres—samurai films, war movies, westerns—and the franchise is often liveliest when those influences are visible. A character-driven space adventure with car-movie energy could give Starfighter a personality that is not dependent on another Death Star, another secret bloodline, or another return from the original trilogy.

There is pressure behind that promise. Starfighter will be Lucasfilm’s next theatrical release after The Mandalorian and Grogu, a film Disney said fell short of its box-office expectations. A new title and a famous lead will get attention; Kade and his ship still have to give audiences a reason to care about unfamiliar corners of the galaxy.

Star Wars: Starfighter opens May 28, 2027, exactly 50 years and three days after the original Star Wars reached theaters. The name is official, the premise is clearer, and the first footage exists. Lucasfilm still has not released that footage for people outside D23.